At the first day of its spring General Conference on Saturday, March 31, 2018, the LDS Church will announce how many convert baptisms took place in 2017 as well as how many missionaries are currently on the field. The past two years have seen a huge decrease in missionary participation and conversions to the church. Read more here.

MRM’s Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson will spend the month of March (and going into April) taking a closer look at a book authored by BYU professor Charles Harrell in a 25-episode podcast series of Viewpoint on Mormonism. The book can be a valuable resource to utilize when sharing the Christian faith with a Latter-day Saint since Harrell provides the correct interpretations to a number of biblical verses so often misused by LDS leaders and laypeople. A 50-page set of notes used in the podcast series is also available for an electronic gift of any size to MRM (see the front of this article for more info). It’s an interesting series that we think many of our listeners will enjoy. For a written review of the book as well as the podcast links, click here.

Check out the categories for hundreds of articles, podcasts, and videos at MRM!

A book filled with ideas on how Christians can share the Christian faith with their Mormon friends, neighbors, and relatives will be released in June by Harvest House. This will be an incredible resource for anyone who is interested in sharing their faith in a gentle and respectful manner. Pre-sale copies of the book that are signed by some of the contributors will be available soon on this website. To see a news release, click here.

While church leaders and many LDS scholars no longer point to the Dead Sea Scrolls for support of ancient Mormon doctrines, there are some who continue to do so. The parallels used by those Mormons hoping to find a smoking gun connecting Mormonism to the people who copied and compiled the Dead Sea Scroll texts are quite a stretch, including the assertion that the Essenes believed in the preexistence, eternal families, and temple ordinances. When the Scrolls and the lives of the Essenes are studied, however, these parallels cannot be found. Besides an extended article with documented evidence, a week-long Viewpoint on Mormonism podcast series takes a closer look at this topic. Click here.

I don’t normally write reviews of books written by lay members of the LDS Church; normally, I save my limited time to research for books written by LDS General Authorities or Mormon apologists from BYU. However, I recently was perusing the offerings at a local Deseret Industry thrift store and came across a book penned by (as of 2014) a 76-year-old man named Charles Abbott. The title was intriguing, apparently written as a testimony of a man entering the last years of his life. It is no doubt a written witness for his future generations. “Should I buy it?” I asked myself. What the heck, it was only 50 cents, so what did I have to lose? His writing is very typical of the type of argumentation we hear on the streets when we’re sharing our faith and I think a review of this will be beneficial. To continue reading, click here.

For many Latter-day Saints, the pressure of living up to the many specific LDS commandments can be so difficult that it results in a perfectionist mindset. For Elona Shelley, the goals of maintaining her Molly Mormon tendencies caused great frustration and guilt. Later in her life, she found fulfillment through minimizing the teachings of the Standard Works and her leaders by making the requirements less stringent. The result is a brand of Mormonism that looks much different than what is understood by most Mormons. Is Shelley correct in her assessment of Mormonism as described in her book Confessions of a Molly Mormon? Or has she created her own version of this religion that ends up not looking anything like the type of Mormonism that is currently disseminated from Salt Lake City? This article along with a 5-part Viewpoint on Mormonism series that airs the last week of January explores these questions. Click here to read and hear more (link to the podcasts).

For many years, Latter-day Saints were led to believe that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by looking directly at the gold plates he supposedly dug up out of the ground that had been buried by Moroni, the last living Nephite, in the fifth century AD. This same Moroni is said by LDS leaders to have come back as an angel almost fourteen centuries later; Moroni introduced Smith to the plates in 1823, allowing him to take them home in 1827. Take a look at both paintings and see the differences. For the article, click here.

Two sisters were polygamously married to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Chosen by Emma Smith to marry her husband–though Joseph had already married them behind her back–these two young women have a story to tell. Whatever happened to them? Read the article written by MRM’s Bill McKeever that was published in the September/October edition of Mormonism Researched here.

In 2017, BYU professor Brad Wilcox wrote a book about grace that seems to go against much of what the traditional viewpoint has been, based on teachings from General Authorities and what is recorded in church manuals. What is Wilcox’s view of grace as compared to these other leaders? MRM’s Bill McKeever looks at this issue here.

The entire Mormon plan of salvation rests on the idea that all people once existed as spirits in a “preexistent” realm. Verses from the Bible, especially the Old Testament, are trotted out to support this idea. If preexistence is true, then Mormonism is correct in saying that all humans had to earn their way to become endowed with human bodies, necessary for anyone to progress to godhood. Does this important doctrine have any biblical support? Click here.

While there are no perfect churches, it’s commanded in the Bible for Christians to be in felllowship with other believers. Since 2012, MRM has recommended churches throughout the state of Utah. Our list has just been updated, offering good Bible-believing fellowship choices for wherever you live in Utah. We’ve cataloged these by county locations. If you need a church home, check it out! And if you know a good Utah church not on our list, tell us at [email protected] To see 150 church names, go here.

To that question, we believe that accepting the Trinity is a cornerstone of the biblical Christian church. Unfortunately, Mormonism’s leaders have not only denied this belief but even mocked it. So just what is the Trinity? Is the teaching even understandable? Check out our new page that offers articles, YouTube videos, blogs, and podcasts. If the Trinity is true, it needs to be defended by the Christian who has questioning friends and neighbors. Click here to see what’s available.

In an attempt to deal with several vital historical issues propagated by the LDS Church throughout the years, the Mormon Church has been producing essays since late 2013 under its “Gospel Topics” section of its lds.org website, attempting to reconcile the facts with what had been taught by earlier leaders and church manuals. To see these links to the LDS Church website along with MRM’s responses, click here.